Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he has made an assessment of the potential impact of the abolition of NHS England on the Neurology Transformation Programme.

Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

NHS England’s Neurology Transformation Programme will be concluding at the end of this financial year. By this time, we will have delivered all of the products, tools, and best practice guidance to support integrated care boards and local pathfinders to transform neurology services at a local level. Expert clinical advice and support will continue to be available during 2026/27 to support local transformation.

As we bring together the Department and NHS England to form a new joint centre, we will empower staff to focus on delivering better care for patients, including for people with neurological conditions, driving productivity up and getting waiting times down. By the end of the process, we estimate that these changes will save hundreds of millions of pounds a year, which will be reinvested in frontline services.

We continue to take forward the Government’s ambitious reform agenda as set out in the 10-Year Health Plan, which will deliver the three big shifts our National Health Service needs to be fit for the future: from hospital to community; from analogue to digital; and from sickness to prevention. All of these are relevant to improving neurological care for people in all parts of the country. More tests and scans delivered in the community, better joint working between services, and greater use of apps and wearable technology will all support people to manage their long-term conditions, including neurological conditions, closer to home.

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent assessment she has made of the potential impact of (a) illegal waste dumping and (b) fly-tipping on rural communities.

Answered by Mary Creagh - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)

While no recent assessment has been made, we appreciate the difficulty that illegal waste dumping and fly-tipping poses to rural communities. We work with a wide range of parties through the National Fly-Tipping Prevention Group, which involves the Environment Agency (EA) and National Farmers Union, to promote and disseminate good practice, including how to prevent fly-tipping on private land.

We are making policy and regulatory reforms to close loopholes exploited by criminals - fundamentally reforming the waste carriers, brokers and dealers system, tightening waste permit exemptions and introducing digital waste tracking. We have increased EA’s budget for waste crime enforcement by over 50% this year to £15.6m enabling the EA to increase its frontline criminal enforcement resource in the Joint Unit for Waste Crime and area environmental crime teams by the equivalent of 43 full-time staff.

We encourage local authorities to make good use of their enforcement powers which include prosecution. On conviction, a cost order can be made by the court so that a landowner’s costs can be recovered from the perpetrator. We are also reviewing local authority powers to seize and crush vehicles of fly-tippers, to identify how we could help councils make better use of this tool.

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how much was spent on benefit payments to foreign nationals in the 2024-2025 financial year.

Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)

The information requested is not readily available and to provide it would incur disproportionate cost.

Found: Lewis Cocking: I am Lewis Cocking, the Member of Parliament for Broxbourne.

Found: Watch the meeting Members present: Florence Eshalomi (Chair); Lewis Cocking; Andrew Cooper; Mr Lee Dillon

Found: Current membership Florence Eshalomi (Labour; Vauxhall and Camberwell Green) (Chair) Lewis Cocking (Conservative